É " La Befana " por Gene Wolfe.
“La Befana.” An old woman comes to a hostile planet in search of redemption for her sins, committed long, long ago.
Algumas citações da história:
When Zozz, home from the pit, had licked his fur clean, he howled before John Bannano's door. John's wife, Teresa, opened it and let him in. She was a thin, stooped woman of thirty or thirty-five, her black hair shot with gray; she did not smile, but he felt somehow that she was glad to see him. She said, "He's not home yet. If you want to come in we've got a fire."
....
Bananas nodded. Maria said, "Daddy, how did Grandmother come here?"
"Same way we did."
Mark said, "You mean she signed a thing?"
"A labor contract? No, she's too old. She bought a ticket - you know, like you would buy something in a store."
Maria said, "That's what I mean."
"Shut up and play. Don't bother us."
Zozz said, "How'd things go at work?"
"So-so." Bananas looked toward the back room again. "She came into some money, but that's her busines - I didn't want to talk to the kids about it."
"Sure."
"She says she spent every dollar to get here - you know, they haven't used dollars even on Earth for fifty, sixty years, but she still says it, how do you like that?" He laughed, and Zozz laughed too. "I asked how she was going to get back, and she said she's not going back, she's going to die right here with us. What could I say?"
....
"She could have lived good for the rest of her life on what that ticket cost her." Bananas was silent for a moment. "She used to be a big, fat woman when I was a kid, you know? A great big woman with a loud voice. Look at her now - dried up and bent over; it's like she wasn't my mother at all. You know the only thing that's the same about her? That black dress. That's the only thing I recognize, the only thing that hasn't changed. She could be a stranger - she tells stories about me I don't remember at all."
Maria said, "She told us a story today."
Mark added: "Before you came home. About this witch."
Maria said: "That brings the presents to children. Her name is La Befana the Christmas Witch."
Zozz drew his lips back from his double canines and jiggled his head. "I like stories."
A torção, que o consulente não incluiu, é:
Grandmother is implied to be "La Befana", doomed to walk the world seeking the Christ child, here even to other worlds, although the last line implies her journey is almost at an end. As Russel hinted in his comment, the last line is, "Not forever, dearest; only until tomorrow night."